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Rise of Christian culture in the first three centuries A.D

CD1-34_001

THE RISE OP CHRISTIAN CULTURE IN THE FIRST THREE CENTURIES A.D.
The study of early Christianity is a difficult one owing to the scarcity of
material available. Even an educated contemporary like a Roman official would
have found it difficult enough, and as for studying Christian culture, he would
have been quite convinced that no such thing existed. And in a sense he would
have been right, since the Church was at that time a new creation and Christians
felt that they were existing apart from the world and from contemporary society,
living by faith and hope and expecting the destruction of the present order and
the coming of a new world.
Nevertheless this is the most important period of all, for it was the time when
the creativeness and world transforming power of Christianity were shown in the
highest degree. Christians may not yet have possessed a culture, but they had
the power to change culture. For in these three centuries they performed the
miracle - which was a cultural as well as a religious one - of permeating the
society of the ancient world against the will of its rulers and official teachers and educators and building a new Christian order inside the Empire and within
the established order of Roman Hellanistic culture. This spiritual revolution
is unique in the history of the world civilizations, for the other great religious movements of change like the establishment of Islam or the infiltration of
Buddhism into the Chinese Empire are not strictly comparable. In fact it seems
to be the fulfilment on a world-wide scale of St. Paulfs Epistle to the Corinthians that "God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise
and the weak things of the world to confound the strong, and the poor and con-
temptable things and the things that are not that he might destroy the things
that are".
But though the first Christians did not possess a specific culture in the
ordinary sense of the word, they were not without their own cultural tradition.
For they had inherited the tradition and the literature of the one people that
had obstinately maintained its separate national and cultural identity against
the pressure of the world civilization that surrounded it and that had overwhelmed the separate cultures of all the other peoples of the Mediterranean and the Near East.
Christian Culture arose from the impact of a unique oriental faith and religious
tradition on the cosmopolitan culture of the Mediterranean world which had just
been reorganized and united by the Roman Empire. The Christian Church and the
Roman Empire were practically contemporary with one another and it seemed to
many Christians in the succeeding period that there was a providential connection between the establishment of a universal state and the coming of a universal religion. But it would be a grave mistake to suppose that Christianity was
the result of a movement of religious syncretism that corresponded with the
cultural syncretism of the Roman-Hellenistic world. On the contrary the two
societies were altogether alien from one another and had their origins in completely different worlds. InJhile the rest of the Mediterranean world was being
integrated into one great society by the influence of Hellenistic culture and
education and Roman government and law, one little people obstinately refused to
be assimilated. The stronger the external pressure of the world society, the
more intense was the consciousness of the Jewish people in its unique destiny
which set it apart from the Nations. For more than a thousand years they had
maintained their faith through the successive waves of conquest that had overwhelmed the lesser peoples of the Near East. The Assyrian and the Babylonian,
the Persian and the Macedonian had come and gone, but the hope of Israel still
lived on, and through the dark ages of conquest and oppression the remnant of
the chosen people still held fast to the sacred heritage of the divine law which

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This image may not be reproduced, published or deposited in another institution for any reason without the express written consent of the Department of Special Collections, University of St. Thomas Libraries, 2115 Summit Avenue, Saint Paul, MN 55105; (651) 962-5467; uarchives@stthomas.edu

Transcript

THE RISE OP CHRISTIAN CULTURE IN THE FIRST THREE CENTURIES A.D.
The study of early Christianity is a difficult one owing to the scarcity of
material available. Even an educated contemporary like a Roman official would
have found it difficult enough, and as for studying Christian culture, he would
have been quite convinced that no such thing existed. And in a sense he would
have been right, since the Church was at that time a new creation and Christians
felt that they were existing apart from the world and from contemporary society,
living by faith and hope and expecting the destruction of the present order and
the coming of a new world.
Nevertheless this is the most important period of all, for it was the time when
the creativeness and world transforming power of Christianity were shown in the
highest degree. Christians may not yet have possessed a culture, but they had
the power to change culture. For in these three centuries they performed the
miracle - which was a cultural as well as a religious one - of permeating the
society of the ancient world against the will of its rulers and official teachers and educators and building a new Christian order inside the Empire and within
the established order of Roman Hellanistic culture. This spiritual revolution
is unique in the history of the world civilizations, for the other great religious movements of change like the establishment of Islam or the infiltration of
Buddhism into the Chinese Empire are not strictly comparable. In fact it seems
to be the fulfilment on a world-wide scale of St. Paulfs Epistle to the Corinthians that "God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise
and the weak things of the world to confound the strong, and the poor and con-
temptable things and the things that are not that he might destroy the things
that are".
But though the first Christians did not possess a specific culture in the
ordinary sense of the word, they were not without their own cultural tradition.
For they had inherited the tradition and the literature of the one people that
had obstinately maintained its separate national and cultural identity against
the pressure of the world civilization that surrounded it and that had overwhelmed the separate cultures of all the other peoples of the Mediterranean and the Near East.
Christian Culture arose from the impact of a unique oriental faith and religious
tradition on the cosmopolitan culture of the Mediterranean world which had just
been reorganized and united by the Roman Empire. The Christian Church and the
Roman Empire were practically contemporary with one another and it seemed to
many Christians in the succeeding period that there was a providential connection between the establishment of a universal state and the coming of a universal religion. But it would be a grave mistake to suppose that Christianity was
the result of a movement of religious syncretism that corresponded with the
cultural syncretism of the Roman-Hellenistic world. On the contrary the two
societies were altogether alien from one another and had their origins in completely different worlds. InJhile the rest of the Mediterranean world was being
integrated into one great society by the influence of Hellenistic culture and
education and Roman government and law, one little people obstinately refused to
be assimilated. The stronger the external pressure of the world society, the
more intense was the consciousness of the Jewish people in its unique destiny
which set it apart from the Nations. For more than a thousand years they had
maintained their faith through the successive waves of conquest that had overwhelmed the lesser peoples of the Near East. The Assyrian and the Babylonian,
the Persian and the Macedonian had come and gone, but the hope of Israel still
lived on, and through the dark ages of conquest and oppression the remnant of
the chosen people still held fast to the sacred heritage of the divine law which